Legal experts condemn Apple bowing to White House's request to remove ICE tracking app

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NPR

October 3, 2025 7:34 PM ET


Apple and Google on Thursday removed apps that alert people when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are nearby following pressure from Attorney General Pam Bondi. Critics of the tech giants capitulating to the Trump administration say it shows the sway President Trump has over Silicon Valley in his second term.

Apple said it yanked an app called ICEBlock from its app store after the "safety risks" of the app were made known to the company. The anonymous, crowd-sourced app describes itself as "Waze but for ICE sightings," and claims to serve as an early warning system informing people when ICE agents are nearby.

The app was launched in April and garnered hundreds of thousands of downloads, but it was only after Attorney General Pam Bondi put Apple on notice, demanding the app be pulled from the App Store, that the company made it unavailable. "We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so," said Bondi in a statement to Fox News.

The Justice Department did not respond to NPR's questions about its request.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/03/nx-s1-5561999/apple-google-iceblock-app-removal

[lostincalifornia]

1. I find it hard to believe that their are not alternatives out there. Maybe not through Apple, but there

has to be user forums tracking ICE activity out there. Networking through "word of mouth"

That being said, shame on Apple. Not a surprise, since many of the corporate entities both domestic and foreign appear to have no problem caving in to the sociopath for the all mighty buck, with no problem selling our democracy down the river.

I wonder if the time is coming where the government will start blocking certain internet sites like they do in China and other authoritative regimes, that the government views as "undesirable"

[BumRushDaShow]

2. From the 1st sentence of the OP excerpt

Apple and Google on Thursday removed apps

So it was apparently available in Google's Play Store too.

I expect people may be able to "side-load" the app (or any equivalents) via the apk file.

[lostincalifornia]

4. I thought that specific app was only written for IOS, and not Android. I am also sure there

are alternative apps.

https://www.iceblock.app/

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Someone obviously ported something similar to Android

If it had any open source code, then it can be ported to work with all kinds of operating systems (phone or otherwise).

ETA - here is a variant that was supposedly for Android - https://fire-app.net/

[lostincalifornia]

7. Thanks, no surprise.

[COL Mustard]

13. I'm disappointed in Apple

I get that ICE doesn't like being tracked, but neither do traffic cops, and Waze, Apple Maps and Google Maps all allow users to report where there are cops sitting by the road. What's the difference?

When will they start cracking down on people who've downloaded the app? That would seem to be the next step.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. I had friends who had radar detector things in their cars

and that was before any "apps" like Waze. The "crowd sourcing" of the past used to be CB-Radio!

Of course the peak of the sunspots impacted use (11 year cycle), so back then they went in and out of "style".

[COL Mustard]

30. 10-4, good buddy.

I remember those days too!

[Cheezoholic]

32. Amazingly a lot of states were very serious about making them illegal with possible jail up to a year lol

Then you had the "detector wars" with companies making different ways to conceal them in your vehicles, changing what type of speed guns they could sense. My cousin got busted with one in I think Texas or OK (it was the usual ex confederate states that did this shit mostly) and had to pay a 500 dollar fine in the 80's! That was a ton of cash back then.

[BumRushDaShow]

33. Yup.

I think they are illegal in some states but some "old school" drivers still use them and the hard core also have police scanners and monitor the chatter! Most of that stuff is online nowadays too. In fact, I just found this for Philly (tracking the PPD and PFD) - https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/4603

[Marthe48]

3. apple removed an app that helped anti putin candidates

run their campaigns that let people know they were even running.

[speak easy]

6. 'Legal Experts.' - What is the legal issue here?

[BumRushDaShow]

8. From the article

(snip)

The developer of ICEBlock, Joshua Aaron, said he made the app in response to the Trump administration's stepped up immigration enforcement. After it was booted from Apple's app store, Aaron blamed political pressure and vowed to fight it.

He argued the app's service was engaged in a type of protected speech not unlike some of Apple's own apps, like the company's mapping app which allows users to crowdsource accidents, hazards and police speed traps along roadways.

"Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move," Aaron said in a statement.

Apple's action has reignited the debate about what's known as jawboning, when government officials censor speech through intimidation and threats.

(snip)

[thesquanderer]

11. The headline is a bit misleading. Only one legal expert is quoted, in the last paragraph.

Apple's action has reignited the debate about what's known as jawboning, when government officials censor speech through intimidation and threats.
...
"I think many large organizations are trying to keep their metaphorical heads down and act cautiously, even when the government is acting improperly or even unconstitutionally," said Gautam Hans, a law professor at Cornell University, who believes Apple would have a jawboning case but does not expect the company to pursue it. "Compliance will only incentivize further government demands."

[BumRushDaShow]

16. You skipped over the other "legal expert"

Kate Ruane, Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project, said Apple's move should also be viewed as the government's heavy hand muzzling free expression.

"When companies agree to the administration's demands in order to achieve some other goal, whether it be avoiding tariffs or getting merger approval, they send a message to others that it's ok to do the same,"Ruane said. "What's worse, they erode the promise of the First Amendment for all of us at the same time."

Kate Ruane Director, Free Expression Project.

Kate Ruane is the Director of CDT’s Free Expression Project. An attorney with a strong background in legal research, Kate is committed to the freedom of speech and to bringing focus to the ways in which strong protections for free expression benefit communities of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ communities, and other oft-censored groups. Kate’s expertise is expansive and her work spans many issues including the intersection of civil rights and free speech protections, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, online privacy and surveillance, harassment, protecting children online, and disinformation.

(snip)

[speak easy]

17. There is no legal issue here,

A software developer has no legal right, first amendment, contractual or otherwise to post or keep an application on a Private Companies App Store. It is completely within Apple's discretion to accept the Federal Government's assertion that the app in question could put the safety of ICE agents at risk. If they were to reject that, and an ICE agent was injured, they would be legally liable.

This is quite different fro the FCC laying a heavy hand on broadcast TV.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. "This is quite different fro the FCC laying a heavy hand on broadcast TV."

It's not "different".

Your example of going after broadcast media to "censor", is showing exactly what the problem is when it comes to other "media" like "social media" (apps). We're going through that with TikTok and the idiotic violation of a law to bend and sculpt that "app" and its "ownership".

Both "medias" are "regulated" by the federal government but the extent (and manner) of that regulation is what is at issue.

[speak easy]

19. An app is not social media.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. "Apps" most certainly CAN be and are

What do you think this is - https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app

(see the extension?)

Apps that are being used for "community" communication ARE "social media"

Right now, you have state and federal involvement in "privacy" issues and "age verification" -

State and Federal Developments in Minors’ Privacy in 2025

The age verification issue is being litigated right now -

Supreme Court Upholds Age Verification: A Game-Changer for Child Online Safety Laws

Access to certain content has been done both through the web AND "apps".

[speak easy]

21. I stand corrected. Thank you.

Nevertheless, I believe Apple would be legally liable if it could be proved that the app in question led to assaults on ICE agents after being informed by the Federal Government that (in their view) the social media platform put the safety of ICE Agents at risk.

[BumRushDaShow]

23. That is the issue whether there is "liability"

There is a giganto case - Gonzalez v. Google

SCOTUS remanded that back to the 9th Circuit (2023) - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1333_6j7a.pdf

but where you had this ruling for the related case that was decided Twitter v. Taamneh and as part of that -

Supreme Court rules Twitter not liable for ISIS content

By Amy Howe
on May 18, 2023

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against the family of a 2017 ISIS attack victim who sought to hold tech companies liable for allowing ISIS to use their platforms in its terrorism efforts. The lawsuit seeking to hold Twitter, Facebook, and Google liable for aiding and abetting international terrorism cannot go forward, a unanimous court found. And based on that decision, the justices sidestepped a major ruling in a separate case on the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which generally shields tech companies from liability for content published by users. The justices sent that case, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, back to the lower court for another look – suggesting that it too was unlikely to survive.

(snip)

That "Section 230" is what is the "liability" (and lack thereof) part and Apple would not have had any liability for what might have happened with that ICE app, but they were "pressured".

(you made me go right down the rabbit hole and I remember when those cases came through too )

[thesquanderer]

22. Ah. She was not identified as a legal expert within the article itself. I didn't look up her credentials. :-) n/t

[Bengus81]

9. Stop buying those fucking iPhone's and let Tim Apple set on them

Money was the only thing Disney understood and so will Apple

[lostincalifornia]

28. Not that easy since the OP said the Google store was doing the same thing, and they

make the Android OS.

That being said, there are most likely other avenues to obtain that information. The problem will be when they start blocking access to sites that the government doesn’t approve of, like they do in China, Russia, and other authoritarian regimes.

[randr]

10. Trump used the apple play book

To build his cult.

[samnsara]

12. I just shared that app with a woman who said ICE came into the Safeway

grocery store in Yakima Washington. I gave her the app and told it to share it with the co worker who worked at that store. I hope they got it installed. I assume its just going to not b updated and eventually not work.

[JCMach1]

15. Boycott Apple

[dalton99a]

24. Silicon Valley is not our friend

[Javaman]

25. Once upon a time the nerds in high school would get shaken down for their lunch money by the bullies

They vowed to get so rich and powerful that they could not only tell the bullies to fuck off but also destroy them in the process.

Yeah, didn’t quite work out that way did it?

[BumRushDaShow]

27. But then the "arrogant" bullies have had this happen -

[Blue Owl]

26. Maybe Apple could volunteer to help ICE zip tie some more 4-year olds

You know, do something that would really improve this country….

[LetMyPeopleVote]

29. I believe that Apple screwed up and caved to trump

[tonekat]

31. Well, Tim Cook Has Made The Pilgrimage

To pay tribute to the Shitgibbon, and pledge Apple to his service.

[Skittles]

34. very proud to have NEVER bought an Apple product

FUCK THEM